


what I wanted to hold

by beecalm



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fix-It, Manga Spoilers, [reiko voice] for personal reasons I will be ignoring all of my feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29093112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beecalm/pseuds/beecalm
Summary: Family is a superficial word, after all. The wind does not take note of each open doorway it has swept through. Natsume Reiko comes and goes and leaves no pieces behind, but-But.(If there’s a reason why she threw her clothes into a travel case and hopped on the next available train, Reiko has not found it yet.)or; reiko revisits an old haunt, three years later
Relationships: Morinaga Souko/Natsume Reiko
Comments: 9
Kudos: 16





	what I wanted to hold

**Author's Note:**

> kicking off my natsuyuu fic-writing experience with my brand of angsty sapphics having too many thoughts at once. as usual, this started as a small, self-indulgent concept that Escalated significantly. 
> 
> title borrowed from ‘what i wanted to hold’ by florist.

Reiko’s great aunt dies in springtime.

The sunlight over Shihoudani as the train pulls into the station has not yet become unfamiliar, though the few years since Reiko last visited have stretched long and slow around the earth. She’s seen many different forests in many different places, though this one has lodged itself stark and bright amongst her other memories from  _ sixteen.  _

Reiko is nineteen now; suitcase hitting the back of her ankles with every cobblestone, funeral invite tucked neatly into her front pocket. Though the daylight playing through the leaves is familiar as the lines of her own face, Reiko can barely remember her great aunt. After all, the few hours a day she spent in the tidy corridors of that old townhouse, Reiko remained out of sight, out of mind. She remembers the crow with too many eyes that would rap its beak against her window in the middle of the night. She remembers the voices whispering in the rafters, tiny footsteps against the ceiling beams. She remembers the flowers- though sometimes, she wishes she’d forgotten those too. 

The great aunt she stayed with, however, felt more like a ghost than any ancient, terrible thing the forest could throw at her.

The funeral invite came as a surprise only in the sense that, somehow, a relative of hers managed to locate her address. Reiko almost threw it away with the rest of her mail, unopened and unread- and it was only the sender’s address scribbled loosely on the back that made her hesitate. Intentionally or not, it dredged up things she’d long since left behind. Her suitcase hits a cobble jutting higher than the rest, and Reiko still isn’t quite sure why she’s here, feet planted halfway down the long list of places she swore she’d never need to revisit. 

Family is a superficial word, after all. The wind does not take note of each open doorway it has swept through. Natsume Reiko comes and goes and leaves no pieces behind, but-

_ But _ . (If there’s a reason why she threw her clothes into a travel case and hopped on the next available train, Reiko has not found it yet.)

It’s uncomfortable, after all, returning to a place where her name was once folklore. She wonders if children still tell stories about Natsume Reiko; who bites and kicks and talks to things nobody else can see.

There’s an inn just down the road from the station- a family-owned thing that has been open for generations and will be open for generations more. Timeless as the forest it sleeps under. The person sitting at the front desk frowns when he regards Reiko’s windswept hair, her torn-edged skirt, the walking shoes she kicks off in the genkan. There’s another woman slipping off her sandals alongside her, dressed head to toe in delicate hairpins and intricate silks. Though, when Reiko tells her to go on ahead, the receptionist’s frown only deepens. 

It’s almost enough to make her laugh. She wonders if, one day, she’ll learn to check for claws, eyes, fangs- before speaking out loud. 

“Oh,” there’s another woman standing by the desk who looks altogether more normal- proper and composed, dressed in mourning black. A relative, Reiko assumes from the bright grey-green of her eyes. “Natsume Reiko, isn’t it?”

Reiko is too aware of the yokai shuffling around the reception area in its kimono to pay attention to what the woman is saying- something about first-cousins-once-removed, a name that she doesn’t quite catch.  _ I was almost worried to invite you after the stories I heard;  _ she laughs, while the yokai extends a bony hand towards her beyond its silk patterned sleeves.

“Go away,” Reiko tells it, with firm authority. Though she can’t see its face beyond the veil of its mask, its withered fingers still retreat back out of sight. The first-cousin-once-removed- or whatever she said she was-  _ her  _ expression is all too clear. Eyes narrowed, posture defensive.  _ Have you heard of Natsume Reiko, who talks to things which don’t exist?  _

“Nice to meet you,” Reiko says with a stiff dip of her head, and doesn’t mean a word of it.

The forest which bridges this town and the next has always been quiet, so that’s where Reiko goes. 

She tosses her travel case into a bush by the treeline and sweeps over some leaves to hide it from view- confident in the knowledge that she’ll be gone an hour at most. The book, however- that she takes. Unwrapping it from its bundle of clothes, nestling the battered pages into the bottom of her bag alongside the candy wrappers and the hair ties. She bought it from a store in the next town along- the book of friends, a title which had felt hilarious at the time. It's been a long three years since the first name decorated its pages.

Though years have passed since she last walked it, Reiko’s feet follow the old path through the undergrowth as if it were as easy as breathing. Nowadays, it leads through the forest, alongside the river, past the rocks and ends at the foot of a nameless old tombstone. Back then, it led to a girl and a book and a game which Reiko has always been too childish to quit playing.

Reiko has never been good at memorising pathways; never spent time committing maps to memory. She’s always moved too fast for that sort of thing.

Still, somehow, her feet remember the journey as though she were born to walk it.

It takes less than ten minutes for the low-rank yokai to recognise the flash of silver hair between the branches, and whispers soon spread like a gale through the treetops:  _ Natsume Reiko has returned, run for your lives.  _ The forest is teeming with life that scurries away from her footfalls, timeless and rowdy as she remembered it. That part remains familiar, too.

She thinks she might walk until it's too dark to see the path below her own feet. Maybe she’ll pick some fights, take some names, for good measure. Maybe she’ll hop on the next train back, and let Shihoudani fade into obscurity like it should have done years ago.

Ahead, the old tombstone looms weathered and moss-covered through the treeline.

And the past has come back to haunt Natsume Reiko- because there, at its base, sits Souko.

Though the world is full of strange, unknowable things; Reiko does not believe in ghosts. It’s Souko alright- the real deal, head down and scribbling restlessly into a notebook. A little older, a little brighter, not quite as pale as she was when Reiko first dared to know her. 

Reiko turns to leave, because  _ Morinaga Souko _ was never part of her plan, the surprise which turns her gut inside-out was never part of her plan, the sledgehammer of her heart against her ribcage was never part of her plan. She didn’t care then and she sure as hell doesn’t care now, and-

A twig, dry from long days of sunshine, snaps beneath Reiko’s foot. Souko turns and stares like she’s seen a spectre through the undergrowth.

“Reiko?” She calls, and the name fits her voice exactly as Reiko imagined it would.  _ Reiko.  _

“Sorry,” Full of teeth and flippant as she can make it, Reiko grins. “I think you’ve got the wrong person.” She turns, before she can catch anything more than the tail-end of the conflicted expression that passes across Souko’s face.

“No,” a hand wraps around Reiko’s arm and almost pulls hard enough to topple them both into the bushes. Souko is frowning when she turns to face her, a stubborn furrow between her eyebrows that Reiko never got around to understanding. “You’re definitely Reiko. I’d recognise you anywhere.”

Souko stares right through her, and Reiko can’t do anything aside from shrugging her arm free. The whole ordeal feels uncomfortably close to a defeat, and the grin slides off her face. “Yeah,” she concedes, lifting her head to cobble together the last shreds of her dignity. “Yeah, it’s me.”

At that, Souko’s face splits into a  _ smile  _ of all things, watery-eyed and reflective as the river that Reiko hopped across to get here. She’s still holding onto her notebook, pressed against the blue fabric of her skirt, and staring at it is all Reiko can do to keep a neutral expression on her face. She’s learned how to remain defiant by now- aloof and separate as always. There’s no good way to cushion a fall, so Natsume Reiko avoids them entirely.

“Sorry, I’m just so glad to see you again,” Souko’s thumbs crease the edge of her notebook as she speaks, like she’s trying to hold herself back too. “What are you doing here?” 

“Great-aunt’s funeral,” Reiko keeps her expression calm; stares at the sky, the ground, the weather-worn side of the tombstone. Anything to avoid looking at Morinaga Souko. “I won’t be staying long.”

“Ah, that’s a shame,” Souko almost looks sad. “And I’m sorry for your loss.” 

She tacks it on like an afterthought, a second too late, and Reiko can’t help the disbelieving smile which slips out of her. “Something tells me you’re not being genuine when you say that.”

Souko flushes bright red to the tips of her ears, and embarrassment is still a pretty colour on her. It matches the blue of her skirt, the white of her blouse, the green of the leaves behind her. “I really do mean it-” she starts, then tapers off into a smile of her own. “But I’m also glad that you had a reason to come back here. I thought I’d never get to see you again.”

_ And why would you want to-  _ Reiko thinks. The day they parted, the clouds had been storm grey and Souko had stared into her with eyes as empty as a sky carved hollow by lightning. All ozone and bitter, rainsoaked mornings.  _ Same as usual.  _

“I always wanted to apologise for getting sick and disappearing like I did” Souko pushes on, barrelling through each one of Reiko’s expectations with every word she speaks. She’d made a habit out of doing that- back then. (Both of them have something they never quite grew out of.) “I couldn’t forgive myself, for letting things end on such bad terms.”

Reiko stares, and stares, and stares.

(Comfortable as the scenery is, this is unfamiliar territory she’s walking.)

“You got sick?” Reiko replies, dumbly. The only thing she can think to say.

Souko nods. “I think it must have been the rain- I caught a really bad fever and couldn’t get out of bed for days. I thought about a lot of things I wanted to say to you while I was recovering, but even when I waited you never came back.”

_ I waited;  _ the words echo.  _ Well, isn’t that a first. _

“Things like-?” Even though she ushers Souko onwards, Reiko isn’t sure she wants to know the answer. It feels like she’s invited in a haunting, one that not even  _ she  _ was prepared for.

“Mainly that I’m sorry, for buying into rumours so easily,” the embarrassed expression on Souko’s face comes back, tenfold. “Even if they weren’t about you, it was terrible of me to form an opinion on someone based on things other people said.”

“And what if the rumours were true?” Reiko stares at the tree branches overhead, where clawed feet and two wide eyes stare through the foliage. “What if I did pick fights, or talk about things nobody else can see?” 

Souko blinks. “Then, I guess I’d just be glad you chose to be gentle around me instead.”

And finally,  _ finally,  _ that breaks some of the tension pulled bowstring-taut in Reiko’s spine. A laugh escapes her, incredulous. “You don’t care, as long as I’m nice to you?”

“It’s not like that!” Souko shakes her head, but she’s laughing too- bright and clear in the springtime air. The feet on the branch overhead shift, round eyes upturned in something that could almost be relief as it melts back into the foliage. Reiko can feel the warmth of the Book through the thin canvas of her bag. Though it has many pages- the  _ first  _ is not an easy thing to forget.

“That’s fine, then,” she shrugs, though it’s anything but. Morinaga Souko was meant to be a name of the past, but here she stands- stubborn as ever. Yokai are predictable and humans are predictable, and the rules are there for a reason. (The rules are there for Souko to break them.)

“Three years is a long time,” Souko smiles. “Do you want to have tea with me while we catch up?”

Reiko curses herself to hell and back when she nods and says;  _ okay _ . 

-

Souko’s house perches close to the edge of the forest; a worn-down thing lying in the shade of a grand, sturdy evergreen. It’s old but loved, with a well-kept garden and fresh plaster on the walls to hide the cracks and weather damage, and though there’s nobody home, Souko still announces her presence out of habit. Like the walls and the flowers on the hall-table will welcome her back, anyway. 

Reiko’s beaten-up walking boots stick out like a sore thumb in the shoe rack.

“It’s hard to believe I’ve only lived here for a few years,” with a nostalgic grin, Souko slips into one of the side-rooms- half study half library- then ushers Reiko towards a table in the centre. “It feels so much like home.” 

If returning to Shihoudani was uncomfortable, then Reiko thinks  _ this  _ must be a nightmare- surrounded on all sides by books while Souko slams cupboard doors and boils water in the kitchen down the hall. The feeling only gets worse when Souko returns with a tray of tea, pretty cups and a box of delicate little snacks.

Reiko deliberately takes too long pouring her tea, reading the wagashi ingredients list, rearranging her skirt beneath the table. Somehow, Souko doesn’t seem to mind.

“So,” she starts again, once Reiko lowers her cup and decides it's about damn time she stopped stalling. “How have you been spending your time?”

It’s a question Reiko can’t answer honestly, not without admitting that she’s spent the past year hopping between forests and mountains, taking names and leaving rumours in her wake, picking up part time jobs where she can then dropping them weeks down the line.  _ Nineteen  _ has been a strange age, one full of movement.

“Travelling.” Reiko shrugs, after a moment too long.

Souko smiles into her tea. “You never did seem like the sort to settle down in one place.”

“What are you trying to say, huh?” The statement is a poor attempt at familiarity, one that falls painfully flat. Souko at least has the decency not to comment on it.

“You always just did what you wanted- taking naps in the middle of the forest and winning every game I could come up with like you were a natural at it,” her voice takes on a nostalgic tone, staring past Reiko at the sixteen year old girl who couldn’t pick her battles, and therefore decided to fight all of them. She supposes she hasn’t grown up all that much since then. “I could never be like that. I think I’m going to end up staying here forever.”

Reiko knows enough to recognise the sadness haunting the back of her words. She doesn’t ask, but doesn’t change the subject either;  _ tell me if you want to,  _ spoken in the silence.

“I’m still not very healthy,” when she braces her hands against the edge of the table, Souko’s fingers are still as thin and bruised as they always were. She stares down at them, as if they’re somehow to blame. “It’s better than it was, but I think I’ve accepted that I’m never going to be back to normal.”

Reiko thinks she understands, in an abstract sense. Though she doubts she’ll ever find a place to call home- not while her eyes stare into a world she never asked to see- Reiko has learned to live with it by now. She can hold a grin long enough to make it through a job interview, a superficial conversation, before she returns to the forest and loses herself in the familiar call of not-quite-birds in the tree canopy. A place where baseball bats and Books are the only thing she needs. 

A long pause stretches uncomfortably between them- filled only by the tick of the clock in the hallway and the drum of Reiko’s blunt fingernails against the table leg. Beyond the window screen, the tree leaves shift in a light springtime breeze, and Reiko wonders how her suitcase is faring in its hiding place. If the wind were to disturb its covering, she doubts that the mid-ranks would hesitate for a second before stealing her shoes and travel money. 

“I’ve started writing, though!” Souko’s voice splits the silence, then, her entire face lighting up. “It’s something I can do from home, and I enjoy it a lot. I think I’m going to submit some short stories to the local newspaper soon.”

_ It suits her- _ Reiko catches herself thinking. Morinaga Souko, waiting at the old tombstone with her head in a book, unaware of the clawed hands reaching for the buckles of her school shoes. She fixates in on the notebook again, settled on the ground next to Souko’s left leg.

“What do you write about?” She asks, a second too late. (If she pushes the conversation away from her own interests, then maybe she’ll get to leave unscathed.)

“Oh,” Souko laughs nervously, ears turning tell-tale red. “Nothing interesting, really.”

Reiko opens her mouth to tell Souko that she’s seen thunderstorms more subtle, but the slam of the front door cuts her off. Beaten to the chase by a surprised laugh at the extra pair of shoes in the genkan. “Do you have a friend with you, Souko?” The delight in the voice which calls through the warm corridors is all too apparent. Reiko withers beneath it.

“Welcome home, dad,” Souko recites back, practiced and familiar. “We’re having tea in the study.”

The silent warmth of the house beforehand was slightly uncomfortable. The sound of Souko’s father shuffling around in the kitchen, the questions he shouts through the wall about dinner, the way Souko relaxes into herself when the house is full of noise-  _ that’s  _ almost unbearable. Loud, beautiful homes are not places which Natsume Reiko belongs in. Every person has ulterior motives and everyone leaves in one way or another- and while she stopped caring about things like that a very long time ago, the reminder is not an appreciated one.

Reiko doesn’t know what sort of face she must be wearing, but, from the way Souko’s mouth pulls into a frown, she knows it must not be a pretty one.

“I should be leaving,” she announces before Souko can do something terrible- like asking _what’s wrong._ “I have to collect my luggage,” (the truth) “and I still need to check into my room.” (a lie- Natsume Reiko is catching the next train home, and she is leaving Shihoudani and all of Souko’s quiet smiles far behind her.)

She hopes to see herself out but Souko is hell-bent on ruining every one of her plans- catching her in the doorway while she’s fumbling with her laces. The sun is just beginning to dip low in the sky outside, stretching long shadows through the paper screen doors and cutting soft lines out of the sad expression on Souko’s face. 

Reiko looks away, pointedly.

Another thing which hasn’t shifted over the years: Morinaga Souko’s sheer bullheadedness. Right before she steps through the doorway, she grabs Reiko’s sleeve, tugging sharply at the hem. “You can’t leave until you’ve promised you’ll come back tomorrow,” she says, firm and immovable.

“I’m busy tomorrow.” Reiko lies, and does not dare to turn and face her.

“Just for ten minutes, then,” Souko stands her ground, unphased. The sky outside grows more gold-tinted by the second. “I’ll be waiting at the old tombstone like I used to, whether you come by or not.”

When Souko speaks, three years suddenly feel like no time at all- an echo of  _ I won’t lose tomorrow,  _ and  _ come to my garden,  _ and  _ If I win- will you tell me your name?  _ Reiko’s ribs feel as if they’re about to break into tiny, rotten pieces. (She thinks she might know why she opened that letter, why she hopped on that train.)

The past is not the only thing which haunts Reiko. And so, when Souko tells her again-  _ promise you’ll come back- _ she swears her name to it.

-

The sun is cradled low against the horizon when Reiko gets back and finds her suitcase open, one of her dress shoes completely missing.

(The crow yokai laughing away in the tree overhead deserves it, when she throws the remaining shoe in its direction and resists the urge to  _ scream _ .)

-

That night Reiko sleeps restlessly and wakes early, long before the late-spring sun has begun to rise. It serves as a reminder that what she said to Souko the day beforehand was a blatant lie- she’s not busy in the slightest, left to wander the quiet streets of the town until somewhere opens for her to buy breakfast. She almost gets hit by a cyclist outside of a taiyaki stall she doesn’t remember being there previously, and makes a quick retreat back to the forest after that.

Reiko perches at the edge of the treeline, kicks small pebbles at any yokai that are stupid enough to make a grab at her breakfast, and she thinks about Souko. 

She’s a stubborn one- that much hasn’t changed in the slightest. Neither have her steely eyes, her blunt nails, the way her hair curls a little at the ends. It feels like there’s an entire hive of wasps living in Reiko’s stomach when she realises just how many  _ details  _ she’d learned, filed, stored away. So much for not caring. So much for moving on.

The angry bite she sinks into her taiyaki goes down the wrong way, and she swears she almost chokes to death.

When Reiko eventually grows tired of wandering through the forest and steers her thoughts back along the path to the old tombstone, all the clouds have cleared from the sky and left the day bright and warm. It feels more like midsummer than spring so Reiko rolls her sleeves up to her elbows, wrangles her hair into a ponytail, secures it tight with an elastic from the bottom of her bag. The book of friends sits there too, undisturbed.

Souko- of  _ course-  _ is already waiting when Reiko arrives, scribbling into her notebook again. She looks up sharply when Reiko announces her presence and sits heavily beside her, palms pressed into the warm stone and moss. 

“You came after all,” the delight in her voice is so strong that Reiko can almost taste it. The sort of thing she wants to run away from and never look back at again.

“I said I would, didn’t I?” Reiko shrugs. The Book in her bag might as well be a catalogue of Natsume Reiko’s broken promises, but the one she’d made to Souko the evening before had felt different, somehow. Overhead, the sun beats warmer and warmer.

Souko puts her notebook away, folding it into the satchel bag at her side and zipping it out of sight. “You did,” she replies, like she can’t quite believe it herself. “You did.”

“So,” Reiko cuts in, before the wasps in her chest can multiply exponentially. “Did you want to do anything? Because if not, then I’m taking a nap.” She reclines into the stone as if to prove a point, finding it warm and sunsoaked against her spine. Souko prods her gently in the side.

“I explored the forest a bit, after you left,” she says, like a suggestion. “I found a lot of unusual places which I thought you might like.”

“We’ll see about that,” Reiko sends a half-smile in Souko’s direction, because making it a challenge is the only thing she can do to stop herself from feeling utterly dumbstruck. She stands, brushes moss from her skirt, spreads her arms wide and theatrical. “Lead the way.”

Souko sticks to easy pathways, feet falling along a well-used trail carved through the undergrowth by decades of hikers and their walking boots. Reiko could probably follow it with her eyes shut but she still lets Souko forge ahead, trailing after the white collar of her dress, the sway of her hair. She points out the most mundane things with a sense of child-like wonder; the small berries on a tree by the river, a place where swallows nest year after year, a patch of wild garlic where she swears she saw a deer, once.

Finally, they reach a strange cave formation in the middle of the forest- a weathered stone hollow where a stream must once have flowed, tiny stalactites and cobwebs hung from the roof of its mouth. It’s barely large enough for a person to crawl inside, so close to the forest trail that it can’t have gone undiscovered, but Souko still introduces it as if it’s an old friend- grinning from ear to ear.

Reiko doesn’t tell her that she’s seen cave systems twenty times larger and infinitely more magical. Souko is so proud of her discovery that it’s practically contagious, and so even Reiko finds the mismatched colours of the stone a  _ little _ impressive. 

“I hid in it once, when it was raining,” Souko hums to herself, peering into the cave’s open mouth. “I could barely fit though. Trying to be adventurous didn’t really work out for me.”

Even now, Reiko can see sweat beading on Souko’s forehead, the slight tremor of her hands when she straightens back up.  _ She’s still sick-  _ reminds an unhelpful voice that sounds like the breeze playing through the stalactites. 

“That’s enough exploring for today,” Reiko announces, firmly. The rock plateau above the cave is warmed by the sun and just large enough for two, and so she hops up and pats the divot in the stone beside her. “I’ll wake you up in an hour.” Souko blinks once, twice, then scrambles up to join her. Sinking into the warmth of the stones, she curls up like a cat at Reiko’s side and pillows her head against her bag. 

“It’s just like back then,” Souko muses to herself- in the moment before her eyes fall closed. Reiko pretends she didn’t hear a thing.

As soon as Souko’s breathing evens out into sleep, Reiko is terrible and Reiko steals the notebook from right beneath her head.

Best case scenario; Souko finds out and never speaks to her again. Worst case scenario; Souko finds out and doesn’t care at all. (Both prospects feel like blunt force trauma to her ribcage. Reiko hates it more than anything.)

The notebook is clearly well-loved and well-used, with creased edges where it's been dropped more than once, and a frayed ribbon trailing from between the pages that looks like it was stitched on by hand. Perhaps she bought it from the same store that Reiko found the empty bones of the book of friends, maybe it sat on the next shelf along, and-  _ stop stalling, Natsume Reiko. _

Souko’s handwriting is neat, her sentences flow like water, and she writes about girls with grazed knees and fire in their eyes. The nameless girl that lives between the pages is bright and wild and  _ danger  _ made incarnate, and the voice which tells her story is so fucking in love with her that the smudged ink almost carves scorch marks into Reiko’s fingertips. 

She thinks she understands why Souko didn’t want her to see. Why she mentioned writing under a pen-name. 

As the sun climbs higher, higher, higher, Reiko slips the notebook back into Souko’s bag without disturbing her. She kind of wants to leave her there, because waiting is not something she’s ever been accustomed to. 

_ And if it is to feel the sunlight again-  _ the first page in the notebook had read, etched in pretty black calligraphy-  _ then I will wait forever. _

(Being waited  _ for,  _ now that’s even less familiar.)

-

Souko stirs in her sleep after an hour has passed, cracking open dry lips and asking, half-dreamlike, “Will you stay, this time?”

Reiko wants to tell her;  _ not a chance. Not for anyone. _

“Go back to sleep,” she replies instead, and the breeze carries it away.

\- 

After a short, tense conversation with a family member in the space between her bedroom and the dining hall, Reiko’s fate of attending the funeral is sealed. It’s a bright day, even warmer than the one before, and the sun rides high in the sky- hardly the correct atmosphere for mourning. Still, Reiko stands at the outskirts in a black dress and her walking boots, staring at her laces while people around her share fond, quiet memories of a great aunt whose name she doesn’t even remember.

The crow yokai from two days before perches next to her, wearing her stolen dress shoe like it's a hat. Chattering to itself in the closest thing a bird can get to raucous laughter. When Reiko tries to swat at it discreetly, the first-cousin-once-removed from the inn lobby narrows her eyes and  _ stares.  _

_ You’re the one who invited me,  _ Reiko could almost laugh; a little bitter, a little humourless.  _ Don’t you know that rumours come about for a reason? _

She leaves as soon as she’s able to, slipping unseen through the gates, down the street, past the tangle of leaves which makes up the forest’s edge. Though she knows exactly where she’s going, the reason  _ why  _ escapes her entirely. Reiko has never minded the stares, the whispers, the strange looks- if anything, she’d invited them. Her own act of defiance against all the things she never had a choice in to begin with. If kids want to throw rocks at her, then she’ll throw them right back. If people want to tell stories, then she’ll live up to them with everything she’s got. If family members want to shuttle her left right and centre, then she’ll find a place of her own until, one day, she will finally be forgotten. 

Every so often though, something slips through the cracks, burrows its way in. (It doesn’t bother her. It just sits, unmoving.)

Souko almost falls off the stone ledge in surprise when Reiko lands heavily beside her, bruised knees knocking against her own. “What about the funeral?” Confusion makes itself at home behind her voice, eyes travelling from the laces of Reiko’s walking boots to the neckline of her dress.

Reiko is suddenly all too aware that she didn’t change before she left, sitting in the middle of the forest in a funeral dress she only just bought on her way to the station. It’s a little too big around the waist and the skirt falls shorter on her legs than it should do- and she thinks she might have forgotten to cut the tag out, based on the way something digs into the ridge of her spine.

“Already finished,” she shrugs, noncommittal as she can manage when all she can feel is Souko’s steel-blue gaze tracing the faint, constant bruises on her arms. 

Reiko needs to keep moving and she needs to keep moving  _ fast _ , and so she takes Souko by the wrist and strides back into the shade of the treeline. Hiding just out of sight there is a field of blue flowers waiting for her to find it again, one she once told Souko about. (One she once dreamed of sitting alongside her in.) Though Reiko has never been one for keeping old promises- three years late is better than  _ never _ . 

Branches snag at the hem of her skirt and Souko stumbles over her feet behind her, but she tries her best to keep up regardless.

“Is it much further?” She asks, while Reiko helps her hop across the stream and swears that they’ve passed the same place twice. She looks tired, out of breath from the brisk walk, and Reiko digs her nails into her palms.

“It should be around here,” Reiko swears. It comes out more uncertain than anything.

She’d always had an inkling that the flowers weren’t quite of this world- that the blue petals nodding beneath the cloudless expanse of the sky were fueled by more than just sunlight and nutrients- and the way the path loops back to the river for the third time only confirms it. Reiko wonders, if she did find it, whether Souko would even be able to see the swaying blossoms, the roots buried in the forest’s open palm. 

Frustration begins to grow teeth and fangs, curled up inside of Reiko’s chest.

“It’s just-” she forges on, swipes at the leaves with her hands and barely notices when a branch swings back and cuts a nick into the flesh of her palm. Somewhere in the forest she  _ knows  _ there is a field of blue flowers that stretches as far as the eye can see. Petals that flood between trees that rise from the ground like the ribs of a sleeping monster, turning the sky above and the ground below into mirror images. Reiko doesn’t  _ want  _ for many things- but even she has her exceptions.

She wants to nap with her head submerged under the petals, pollen tickling her nose. She wants Souko to wake her up once an hour has passed.

And then the tombstone looms through the treeline once again, right back to where they started. Pacing back and forth across the clearing, Reiko wants to pull her damn hair out in anger.

A few steps away, Souko pitches wearily against the stone for support; breath heaving from her lungs in ragged gasps. Still, she has the energy to smile when Reiko grimaces and swears that the flowers are real and beautiful, that they have to be  _ somewhere  _ nearby and-

“Reiko,” Souko laughs, because she’s always seemed to like saying that name out loud. “I don’t mind. If you say that they were beautiful, then they were beautiful,” and then, unbelievably, “I trust you.”

_ You have terrible judgement,  _ Reiko wants to tell her. Instead, she sits down at the treeline and picks angrily at the torn-edged skin of her palm. 

“You’ll make it worse!” The surprised exclamation which Souko lets out is almost enough to make Reiko jump. Peeling herself away from the tombstone, she grabs Reiko’s hand and studies it close. “Sorry to take up more of your time, but I can’t let you walk around like that.”

This time, it’s Souko’s turn to take the lead- shepherding them back towards her house at the edge of the forest. She walks with a purpose though she’s obviously tired, fingers linked with Reiko’s and a steely sort of determination set into her eyes. She got her ears pierced over the three years since she last saw her, Reiko notices. Two silver studs, bright against her hair. She stares at them while she follows, wordlessly. 

(Even if Reiko protested, she doesn’t think she’d get a choice in the slightest.)

-

Souko’s garden does not stretch as far as the eye can see, and the flowers in their beds do not pull ancient secrets from the ground with their roots. Still, Reiko likes the way the petals spill into the grass, the way the little stepping-stones distributed across the lawn serve absolutely no purpose. Most importantly, it’s quiet- just her and Souko and the evergreen’s timeless vigil. No yokai to steal her shoes or whisper foolishly into her ear. 

Absentmindedly, Reiko pulls threads out of the dressing around her palm and Souko threatens to bandage her hands together until she stops, but still makes no effort to uproot herself from the lawn. It’s almost too peaceful for things like that.

The flowers in Souko’s garden are red, pink, yellow, orange- a sea of warmth that smells of summer to come. They blur and fade at the corners of Reiko’s vision while she pillows her head in the grass, the scratch of Souko’s pen against her notebook lulling her into sleep. Though there’s not a single blue flower in sight, Reiko thinks she might just prefer it that way.

Just as Reiko’s limbs are about to melt into the earth, Souko’s stomach growls something fierce. The red tulips in the corner of the garden are rivalled only by the colour of her face when she buries her head in her hands and Reiko can’t do anything to hold back the snort of laughter that escapes her.

“Hungry?” She asks, just to watch Souko blush harder. 

There’s a stall just down the road selling warm streetfood- Reiko smelled it earlier, and hopes Souko likes meat buns when she walks back and buys enough to feed a small army. She thinks, one day, she’d like to take Souko to Nanatsuji. (The implication that there’ll be a  _ next time  _ is something she quickly crushes deep, deep down.)

It occurs to Reiko suddenly and jarringly that she left the book of friends behind, when she steps back through the gate and finds it lying open in Souko’s lap.

She supposes it’s only fair- she looked through Souko’s own notebook uninvited just the day before- but that doesn’t stop the way she freezes in the boundary between street and garden, a meat bun half-way to her mouth. When the book snaps shut in Souko’s hands, Reiko has never felt the urge to  _ explain  _ herself so strongly. 

_ It’s not-  _ Reiko starts, at the same time as Souko smiles calm and genuine and asks;  _ what are they? _

Reiko blinks. 

“Is it a book of artwork, or-” Souko continues. Fingertips splayed across the cover, gentle as anything despite how weather-damaged her hands have always looked. Like the book of friends is something sacred and important against her palms.

Reiko takes her chances, lowers herself into the grass, places the bag of meat buns between them like a poor attempt at a peace offering.“They’re names,” she hesitates.

Like she’s asking for permission, Souko pauses, then turns to the first page.  _ Soranome,  _ then  _ Hidaka,  _ then  _ Mikage.  _ Every promise that Reiko has made and broken and left behind, tucked inside of those pages. “Can you teach me how to say one of them?” After an eternity has passed, Souko finally speaks. 

“Don’t want to,” Reiko grins, and lets herself breathe again.

-

Souko stops Reiko at the gate before she can leave, once the sun has settled low against the horizon and cast a pink blush over the treetops. She scribbles something into her notebook, folds it up into a tiny square, and presses it firmly into the palm of Reiko’s hand. The paper feels warm as an incantation through the bandages, against the torn skin.

“Don’t look at it till later,” Souko makes her promise, makes her swear her name to it.

Reiko rarely makes pacts she intends to keep, and so she unfolds the paper no sooner than she’s made it through the treeline, tilting it towards where the sun pulls the shadows long and golden.

_ Morinaga Souko-  _ it reads. Edged in sunlight, written with the kanji for  _ blue.  _

-

She almost catches the train home, that night. Stands in the station wearing the torn-edged mess of her funeral outfit, bruises her knees with her travel case and waits for the tell-tale flicker of lights across the tracks. It’s late and it's cold and her palm starts to bleed through the dressing Souko wrapped around it- but Natsume Reiko has taken worse hits before, and she will take worse hits again.

_ Good people _ don’t exist, after all.

Reiko sure as hell isn’t one. She breaks promises like it’s a game she intends to win, steals names to fill the hollow in her chest that eats and eats and eats. She leaves rust-brown blood on the train station bench and glares down the passengers who side-eye her torn skirt and scraped shins.  _ You look a mess-  _ her first-cousin-once-removed had snapped, when she’d followed her to the gate of the funeral parlour.  _ Close your eyes, then-  _ Reiko had replied without hesitation.

Souko isn’t a good person either. (But, as Reiko thumbs the edge of the  _ name  _ sat in her palm, she thinks she might be as close as a girl can get.)

It’s hard to recognise a good thing until you’ve broken it with your own two hands. Sometimes she thinks she’s walking a road to ruin paved with only the worst intentions; Reiko is selfish and she has a hole in her chest that wants, wants, wants only things she should not touch. Souko is bright and steadfast and she lives with her head stuck inside a fairytale world- alongside a version of Natsume Reiko that’s just as close to folklore as the children’s tales from the next town along. Reiko lets her head fall back against the wall, watches the moths whirl around the station lights.

(They're both selfish, and stubborn, and maybe  _ as close to good as a person can get  _ isn’t close in the slightest.)

The last train of the night pulls into the station, then pulls out of the station without Natsume Reiko on board.

(She's starting to realise that might not be such a bad thing, after all.)

-

For some incomprehensible reason, Reiko finds herself walking through the forest again the following afternoon, Souko’s footsteps and lighthearted conversation following her down the uneven trail. She’d planned a picnic of all things- loading rice balls and sliced fruit into a basket then avoiding Reiko’s eyes as she admitted it's something she’d always wanted to do with a friend. All of Reiko’s protests towards the notion had caught in her throat, at that.

The sunny spell that has gripped Shihoudani for days on end hasn’t budged in the slightest, and Souko reads directions towards a field in the West off a small pocket map she claims her grandfather gifted her. Reiko hears her stumble once, then once again, as the sun cruises high above the canopy. 

“I think we need to turn right at the next fork in the trail,” the weariness in Souko’s voice is so heavy that Reiko can almost taste it.

“We’re stopping at the next field we come across,” Reiko shoots back. Souko frowns into her map but makes no effort to protest- like an awareness of her own limits is something she’s been forced to learn over time. 

Reiko recognises the clearing which the treeline thins into- a popular spot for yokai, filled with warm grass, wildflowers and sunlight. The crooked wayside shrine at the far end once housed a charitable deity who hosted parties that lasted weeks, and, though long since empty, it still attracts inhuman visitors to its time-worn doors. 

“It’s nice and quiet here,” Souko smiles, laying down the blanket she brought and nearly stepping on a tiny, shrieking figure as she goes. Reiko slingshots a pebble at it before it can make a lunge for Souko’s ankle, then busies herself with the picnic basket.

Reiko likes to think that she’s learned at least a bit of self-preservation over the years, and so she doesn’t mention out loud that the clearing is  _ far _ from quiet.

She alternates between spilling crumbs into her lap and flinging rocks at yokai that creep too close when Souko isn’t looking, drowning out their excited chatter with meaningless conversation of her own. Talking about every mundane thing under the sun so she can’t hear  _ Natsume Reiko  _ and  _ Where is the book  _ and  _ How can she see us.  _ Souko’s energy comes back slightly once she’s eaten, but she still wilts under the heat of midday. Her head tips further and further sideways until it almost comes to rest against Reiko’s shoulder, eyes half-lidded against the daylight. 

“I don’t know how you find these places,” she muses, as Reiko flicks a rock at a human figure barely taller than the grass, striking it square in the forehead. 

Reiko glances over the treetops, the weather-worn doors of the shrine, and lets herself grin a little off-kilter. “Magic,” she replies, then flinches when Souko nods like she believes her entirely. 

Perhaps it’s the lull of spring becoming summer, or the taste of the fresh cherries between them, or the sound of Souko’s attempt at a grass whistle ringing thin and sharp across the field, but Reiko doesn’t see the giant until it’s almost on top of them. She recognises it easily- a slow, ancient thing with moss growing from its joints and tree roots bracketing the fractures in its limbs. Years ago, she’d pulled a fishing line from between its tombstone teeth, and it had lifted her so high that she’d skimmed the tallest tree with her outstretched fingertips.

It’s peaceful as always, more steady landslide than living creature- and it’s headed straight towards their picnic spot.

Reiko stares at the giant and then at Souko, still trying to make something close to music out of the high-pitched whistle. She supposes- everything that comes close to being  _ good  _ has to end, some day.

“You can’t come this way.” The tone of Reiko’s voice splits loud and sharp across the field, authoritative enough that even the giant stops in its rumbling tracks. It crouches meters from the picnic blanket, frozen like a pile of rocks is all it has ever been. “Turn around and go back the way you came.”

This time the clearing really is quiet, yokai silenced in the wake of Natsume Reiko’s voice, Souko still and soundless beside her. Reiko doesn’t turn to face her, because there’s no justification that she’s willing to give. (All good things, broken with her own two hands- just like usual. If humans are predictable by nature, then Reiko thinks she might be the worst of them all.)

“Reiko,” Souko starts, a bitter reminder that nobody has ever said that name so kindly _.  _ “There’s someone here, isn’t there?” 

If Reiko is  _ predictable _ , then Morinaga Souko is a  _ fool-  _ because when she tugs Reiko’s wrist to face her, she’s  _ smiling.  _ Not at Reiko herself, but directly in front of them; where the giant crouches as if awaiting command. Squinting, like she’ll be able to See if she just narrows her eyes hard enough, if she makes a wish, or something equally as absurd.

When Reiko nods slowly, Souko’s grin grows impossibly wider, stretching ear to pierced ear, and she starts  _ waving.  _ She’s looking in completely the wrong place, staring towards where the giant’s shin would be even if she  _ was  _ facing the right direction, but the enthusiasm makes Reiko feel as if she’s been knocked flat on her back. Ribs bruised, lungs gasping for air. So far from  _ thinking straight  _ that it’s getting ridiculous, Reiko takes Souko’s wrist and guides her a little to the right, then a lot upwards- until she can meet the giant’s fractured-crystal gaze.

Souko  _ stares,  _ eyes wide and moon-like at the invisible, vast figure before her. 

“I wish I could see the same world as you,” the words sound something close to awestruck, and Souko doesn’t sound fearful in the slightest. 

Three years ago, Reiko tied an anchor to the complicated feelings about girls and books and weather-worn hands that once sat like an entire swarm of moths inside of her chest. Now, she thinks that the tether she made just wasn’t built to last.

(Reiko has known a great many faces, met a great many people- passing through lives like ships in the night. She never remembered their names. Not like she remembered Souko’s.)

“Souko,” she says out loud, past the insect wings in her throat. “Wish for something else.”

-

Sometimes Reiko admires how stubborn Souko can be. The rest of the time, she thinks it might just drive her mad.

She can hear her stumbling a few paces behind as they descend back towards town, the sides of her shoes catching on every tree root and knot in the pathway. It’s almost unbearable to listen to. The fact that she still insists on carrying the picnic blanket doesn’t do her any favours either, weighing her down where it’s tucked against her side.

Reiko turns to see her wobble for the fifth time in just as many minutes, almost careering off the path into the bushes alongside it. She grits her teeth.

“Are you tired?” It’s more an opening than a question- an opportunity for Souko to swallow her pride just for a while. Instead, she just shakes her head firmly.

“I’ve walked this far before,” Souko reasons, though the exhausted tremor in the back of her voice does her no favours. “If I can’t even do this much, then-”

“You’re not very good at lying.” Reiko cuts her off, secures her arms around Souko’s waist, and hoists her over her shoulder.

It’s not as easy as she first thought it’d be- while Souko is exactly as light as she looks, they’re almost the same height so her limbs trail everywhere, and muscles built up from fighting and climbing do little to help with heavy lifting. Souko shaking with laughter and flailing her legs doesn’t help, either.

Souko squirms and almost kicks Reiko solidly in the face. The run she breaks into as retaliation is unsteady and so  _ ridiculous  _ that it sends her into a fit of laughter herself, lurching down the forest trails with a picnic basket hanging off one shoulder, Morinaga Souko hanging off the other. By some miracle they make it all the way to the stream before Reiko stumbles, slipping on a rock and almost tipping Souko into the water with her. 

She catches herself, of course, but not before her left leg is submerged up to her shins.

It’s disgustingly uncomfortable- Reiko makes it five steps out of the water before grimacing and resigning herself to walking barefoot the rest of the way. Souko swings her legs a little less enthusiastically than before.

“Put me down for a bit,” she taps a hand against the small of Reiko’s back. “You can wear one of mine.”

The shoe that Souko hands her is far too small and leaves her toes more than a little bit squashed- but it’s better than going barefoot. Twigs scratch and bite and bugs are no better, so Reiko puts up little complaint before snapping the buckle of one of Souko’s sturdy mary janes into place. After catching the way Souko’s eyes droop heavily, Reiko makes it an obligation to carry her on her back the rest of the way home; mostly out of fear that she’ll slip and fall on her head half-way down the slope otherwise.

As the sun begins to set and the ground turns warm gold beneath Reiko’s mismatched shoes, Souko buries her nose into the crook of Reiko’s neck and tells her quietly;  _ I love spending time with you. _

It’s soft, earnest, and Reiko feels as if someone has kicked her square in the gut. “Don’t get used to it,” she quips back, hoping that Souko is too out of it to hear the false confidence in her voice.

Souko doesn’t hear it  _ at all _ , fast asleep though it's barely turned evening. Breathing soft and light against Reiko’s hair; a comfortable weight beneath the evergreens. Reiko turns to look at her- stares at the dark eyelashes fanned out across her cheeks, the faint freckles scattering the bridge of her nose, the tired lines of her face- and thinks she might be beautiful.

(A thought to keep to herself, hidden and locked firmly away.) 

When he slides open the front door, Souko’s father is exactly as Reiko expected- kind yet run-down, face lined by a lifetime of both smiles and frowns.

“I brought your picnic basket back,” Reiko greets, then jostles Souko lightly- not quite enough to wake her. “And your daughter.” 

Morinaga-san’s smile is a well-lived expression; deep crows-feet forming at the corners of his eyes. He leads Reiko down the corridor, past the family photos, through the door of Souko’s room at the back of the house. A small, cosy space- filled with books and pressed flowers, a recipe for castella cake laid open on her desk, a tea set stored in the corner. (Reiko isn’t sure what’s more unsettling: the fact that it fits her so well, or the fact that she’s learned enough about  _ Morinaga Souko  _ to tell what suits her in the first place.)

“Thank you for bringing her home,” Morinaga-san says, as Reiko lowers Souko quietly into her mattress. “You’re a good friend.”

Reiko thinks, distantly, that  _ leaving people speechless _ must run in the family.

\- 

By the time she returns to her room at the inn, it’s dark and Reiko has blisters on only one of her heels. As she cobbles her foot back together with plasters, she thinks the ache of it might be the only thing anchoring her- forming roots that curl into Shihodani’s magical, ridiculous soil. Holding her steady, preventing her from leaving.

It’s only as she’s about to sleep, staring up at the leaf-shadows on the ceiling, that Reiko realises she has to face Souko again. To give her shoe back, if nothing else.

(She’s under the distinct impression that she’s been well and truly fooled.)

-

_ I’m going soft-  _ Reiko tells herself the next morning, snagging the threads of her skirt with her nails and ripping a bite into a meat bun from the stall near Souko’s house. The shoe sits in her bag, alongside the Book and her train ticket out.  _ I’m going soft and the worst part is that I don’t hate it entirely. _

Souko seems to have that effect on her.

-

The castella cake recipe- Reiko soon finds- was not a coincidence. The front door of Souko’s house slides open to the sight of her in a flour-dusted apron, brandishing a wooden spoon and grinning like she’d been expecting Reiko all along.

“Help me whisk the eggs?” She asks warmly. It feels like a trap- one which Reiko falls for: hook, line and sinker.

Reiko has never been good at baking, or any sort of cooking at all, for that matter. There’s a  _ reason  _ why she blows most of her earnings on street food and cheap restaurants. That doesn’t deter Souko from forcing a whisk into her hand and attempting to puppeteer her through the process of making an entire cake from scratch. The kitchen is warm and bright in the morning sun, and, though Souko crowds over her shoulder to instruct her through every step of the process, Reiko still gets more egg on the floor than she keeps in the bowl.

“This is stupid,” Reiko shrugs Souko’s hand away from her arm. “I’m wasting all of your ingredients.”

“It’s not a waste if we’re having fun,” Souko parrots off in response, barely making it through the line before breaking into a snort of laughter.

“Too bad, I’m not enjoying myself at all.” The cake batter Reiko swipes off the counter and smears on the end of Souko’s nose does little to prove her point. ( _ You’re a good friend  _ laughs the steady tick of the hallway clock.  _ You’re going soft. You’ve been well and truly fooled, Natsume Reiko. _ ) 

When the castella comes out burned on one side, they write it off as a combined effort- Reiko’s inability to work the oven dials and Souko completely forgetting to set the timer. Equally as bad as each other. Still, Souko remains optimistic, brandishing a knife and a cheery statement that they can just cut the top off, that it’ll all be fine. Reiko has her doubts, glaring down at the cake’s charred top, but she still accepts the oven-warm slice that Souko hands to her.

It’s not half bad. When Reiko says so out loud, Souko grins and grins and grins.

Almost twelve hours of sleep have brought all of Souko’s energy back, so they take a walk after clearing away the cake ingredients. It’s a perfect day for it- blue skies and birdsong in the treetops, bright and alive beneath the late morning sun. Reiko’s feet follow the path as if she were born to do so, and the echoes of Souko’s footsteps as they fall in line with her own are almost jarringly familiar. Flowers push through the undergrowth with their nodding, pale heads, and Souko plucks one out by the roots; tucking it neatly behind her ear. With the sky void of clouds, the chance of rainfall is nonexistent.

It’s nothing like the day they split, when Reiko thought she’d learned to leave the past behind her.

As they stop by the tombstone- the place they first met- Souko picks up a rock and turns it between her fingertips. A comfortable, natural weight in the palm of her hand.

“If I win,” she announces, the words a haunting which has followed Reiko for three years straight. “I get to tell you a secret.”

Reiko raises an eyebrow. “You know, I’m not sure it’s supposed to be that way around.”

She collects a rock of her own, anyway.

It’s the same as back then- the triangle wedge cut out of a boulder ten paces away, measuring out the distance, pulling back her arm to throw. Reiko doesn’t hold back; Souko has tipped the world on its axis too many times already. She doesn’t need another seismic shift to knock her flat on her back, unable to breathe. (Reiko has fallen out of more trees than she can count on both hands, but she still hasn’t learned how to land on her feet.)

The rock clatters off the boulder just centimeters from the triangle groove. Close enough.

Reiko doesn’t hold back. Souko wins, anyway.

“Three years of practice,” she laughs, as the rock strikes the direct center with a resounding  _ crack _ . “I’m glad it didn’t go to waste.”

“So-” Reiko starts, forcing down the urge to turn and leave, anchoring herself steadfast into the dirt. “Your secret?”

Souko smiles at Reiko, like it’s the last chance she’ll get to do so. 

Because the secret is this: Souko waited. She waited and she  _ will  _ wait- forever if she has to- because she always hoped that Reiko would come back. And here she is- just as brilliant as she was back then. Just as mysterious. Just as infuriating. Just as beautiful. She wanted to tell her from the moment they met that her eyes have always looked like a storm waiting to split the sky and she practiced this in the bathroom mirror for  _ hours  _ so if it sounds creepy then she’s going to kick herself and-

“And you’re still just as persistent as you always were,” Reiko replies, words bleeding  _ fondness.  _ As close to  _ you make me want to stay  _ as she’ll ever say out loud.

Reiko doesn’t say she loves her even though she thinks she might. Instead she gives her name just as Souko handed over her own, swears upon it that she will visit again, one day- because she’s not as good at leaving the past behind her as she once thought. Humans are predictable, and Reiko is no exception. (Migratory birds fly free and high above the treetops, but they still return to the same roost, year after year.)

Souko doesn’t tell her she loves her, either. Instead she says, like a promise;  _ I’ll wait.  _ ( _ I’ll hold you to your word, and if you don’t come back then I will just have to search for you instead. You’re a chance I’m willing to take.) _

Then Souko reaches up with her bruised hands and blunt nails, cradling Reiko’s face in the curve of her palm. Something light and gentle and familiar as spring, though Reiko doesn’t think anyone has  _ held  _ her so softly before. The wingbeats in her chest swarm to it, moths to a flame.

“What are you doing?” Reiko’s voice cracks, because she  _ knows _ .

When Souko kisses her, it goes like this: blue skies overhead, blue flowers in the undergrowth, Souko’s black dress turned navy under the midday sunlight. The taste of the half-burned castella, the sound of  _ I’ll be waiting.  _ Her heart beating triple-time behind the basket of her ribcage.

“I wrote about you, in my notebook,” Souko confesses after, forehead pressed against Reiko’s own.

“I know,” the laugh Reiko lets out fills her entire chest with static, and she’s certain she’ll never see castella cakes or flowers or the  _ colour blue _ the same way again. “I know.”

(Reiko thinks that, just maybe, this could be something she’s allowed to hold onto.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> comments make me cry happy tears
> 
> twt: bee__calm  
> tumblr: bee-calm


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